Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
With the release of yesterday’s digital Washington Post, which trended on Apple News as the top story for most of the day, and today’s front cover of the Washington Post print edition, our family extends our deepest thanks for the support, emails, website notes, phone calls, etc.
We’re covered in your prayer and encouragement, and it feels fortifying!
Please forgive delays in response, as we’ve taken today to exhale and get some vitamin D/sunshine.
I promised myself I wouldn’t look at comments on any platform, for fear that we’d be ‘dragged’ for this article. Quite the opposite is happening, and your responses are overwhelmingly favorable.
I didn’t expect the response to reach this level – nowhere near this! Our country seems hungry for these truths, across all fronts, and verifiable sources to bring them to life.
The comments on IG, Twitter and emails I’ve received tell us that we need to further explain quite a few things. We’re happy to do that and will seek a medium to do so. There are gaps, despite Sydney Trent’s herculean effort to cover it all. Thirty minutes to cover 300 years – impossible.
While many of you are offended by some of the players in the article, please reserve your judgement until we further explain. Melanie, for example, should be given a wide berth. I was harsh with her, and I don’t regret my stance. She’d done her best. It wasn’t enough and I needed to be straight with her.
We have SO MUCH work to do, but we’ll need to approach it as a collective.
Again, thank you for the encouragement! We’ll use this platform to communicate and also to help close gaps created by the limited time an article afforded us. That article was the tip of the iceberg.
By the way, I’m sitting here in the living room enjoying Netflix’s ‘High on the Hog’ about the cooking experience of Africans and African Americans. The WaPo article explained that Oliver’s mother, my 3rd GG Cynthia Snowden, had been the cook in the home of the enslaver, but so had been Cynthia’s mother, Rachel Snowden, and Rachel’s mother Celia Snowden (circa 1760). The expanded work of Oliver Gilbert and his legacy will assuredly include these cooking women and their cooking genes.
Please know that we’ll do our best to respond to you. Connection and conversation are key to understanding and progress.
With continued gratitude!
Stephanie Gilbert
